Review Summary

How do you reboot an entertainment juggernaut that faded before most of its young audience was born? In the case of the Muppets, you make a leap of faith and hope that the charm of these Jim Henson creations, which once flooded children’s television and movies, remains irresistible. Realizing the potential for consumer burnout, you overlook that the later Muppet movies disappointed at the box office. (Maybe it was time for a break.) You trust that if you do it right, Generation X moviegoers, for whom the Muppets are the near-sacred equivalents of the baby boomers’ Howdy Doody troop, will welcome them back with open arms and misty eyes and take their children. And so you have “The Muppets,” Disney’s endearing, silly, smiley-faced movie directed by James Bobin (“Flight of the Conchords,” “Da Ali G Show”) and arriving on a marketing tsunami. The happy news is that it has been done just about right, which means conceptually and technologically left alone. These are the same old, adorable Muppets, as sweetly innocent and likable as ever. Winking at itself, the movie is casually, amusingly self-reflexive. — Stephen Holden